Kominicki: Union message a lot more than hot air

Raise a glass to the inflatable union rat. Now that it’s 21, it can join you.

It’s a she, actually, dreamed up by striking Chicago bricklayers looking to put a little pop in a 1990 protest. Members of the local approached Big Sky Balloons and Searchlights, a Plainfield, Ill., company that specialized in what the industry calls “advertising inflatables.”

Big Sky owner Mike O’Connor sketched out a rough design, but the bricklayers thought it just wasn’t mean enough. So he beadied up the eyes, added menacing buck teeth and claws, and covered its gray belly with a patch of what he described as “festering” pink nipples.

“Scabby,” as the trades took to calling her, was born.

Word of the rat spread quicker than a summer work stoppage, and O’Connor was soon called upon to design inflatables for picket lines and rallies across the nation. Today, the firm offers a cigar-chomping Greedy Pig that has fistfuls of cash falling out of its pockets and a razor-toothed Corporate Fat Cat that holds a construction worker by the throat. A skunk and cockroach are also trade favorites.

Don’t see anything you like? Big Sky will happily design something for you.

A native of Billings, Mont., O’Connor named Big Sky after his home state. The firm originally offered hot-air balloon rides, but expanded into blow-up advertising in the mid-1980s to boost revenue on those days when the Windy City was just too windy to navigate.

O’Connor made the news again last month, when he erected a giant inflatable baseball at the Little League World Series to honor the Northwest division champs – from Billings – who made it to the U.S. finals before losing to California.

More than two decades after Scabby’s birth, Big Sky’s “rat pack” collection remains the clear bestseller. In addition to the original Scabby, the firm offers a nipple-less gray rat, plus a brownish version with yellow paws and tail. The company continues to sell hundreds of rats each year, from a compact 8-footer, to its rodent magnus, which towers 30 feet and runs $8,000.

That’s a lot of cheese, but it does include a travel bag and generator.

Jimmy Castellane, head of Long Island’s building trades council, estimates that there are at least 30 inflatable rats in the local inventory, in various sizes. The Long Island trades may also hold the record for most rats ever assembled at one site: 14, narrowly topping the 13 rats once brought together for a rally at – where else? – Union Square in New York City.

“A lot of people think there’s only one rat that goes site to site, but we have a whole family of them,” Castellane said. “We’ve also got a pig and Local 12A has a cockroach, a big red one.

“They are, by far, the best thing labor has ever come up with. When a rat goes up, it sends a message that labor is having a problem with this or that business. That means 500,000 union people aren’t going to go in there because the rodent’s outside. Believe me when I tell you they work.”

Government has sought to ban the use of inflatable rats over the years, usually on grounds that the balloons violate local advertising restrictions. But the courts have steadfastly upheld labor’s right to their use under the First Amendment’s protection of free speech. The most recent ruling, by New Jersey’s top court in 2009, overturned a township ordinance that banned inflatable signs outside of grand openings.

“Nonverbal, eye-catching symbolic speech represents a form of expression,” the high court wrote in favor of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. “The township’s elimination of an entire medium of expression renders the ordinance overboard.”